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Interactive Documentary: setting the field

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 SDF 6 (2) pp. 125–139 Intellect Limited 2012

Studies in Documentary Film

Volume 6 Number 2
© 2012 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/sdf.6.2.125_1

Judith Aston
University of the West of England

Sandra Gaudenzi
University of the Arts London

Interactive documentary:
setting the field

Abstract Keywords
This article articulates the authors’ combined vision behind convening i-Docs, the interactive
first international symposia to focus exclusively on the rapidly evolving field of inter- documentary
active documentary. In so doing, it provides a case study of practice-driven research, constructing reality
in which discussion around the act of developing and making interactive documen- authorship
taries is seen as being a necessary prerequisite to subsequent theorizing in relation to agency
their impact on the continuing evolution of the documentary genre. As an essentially enactive knowledge
interdisciplinary form of practice, the article provides a conceptual overview of what collaboration
interactive documentaries (i-docs) are, where they come from and what they could activism
become. The case is made that i-docs should not be seen as the uneventful evolution ethics
of documentaries in the digital realm but rather as a form of nonfiction narrative
that uses action and choice, immersion and enacted perception as ways to construct
the real, rather than to represent it. The relationship between authorship and agency
within i-docs is also considered as being central to our understanding of possibilities
within a rapidly evolving field of study.

The conceptual evolution of the i-docs genre

In order to begin the discussion, a definition of i-docs is needed. The position
taken in this article is that any project that starts with an intention to document
the ‘real’ and that uses digital interactive technology to realize this intention

125
Judith Aston | Sandra Gaudenzi

1. The reasons for such can be considered an interactive documentary.1 This is a deliberately broad
a broad definition of
i-docs are explained
definition of i-docs, which is platform agnostic. Whilst it is in part attuned
by Gaudenzi to Galloway et al.’s definition of interactive documentary as ‘any documen-
her interactive tary that uses interactivity as a core part of its delivery mechanism’ (2007:
documentary entry
of The Johns Hopkins 330–31), the definition provided here recognizes the fact that interactivity in
Guide to Digital i-docs often goes beyond a ‘delivery mechanism’ to incorporate processes of
Media and Textuality production. In addition to this, most of the current literature (Gifreu 2011;
(forthcoming).
Crou 2010; Hudson 2008) confines i-docs to web-docs (documentaries that
2. Draft version of all the use the World Wide Web as a distribution and content production platform)
chapters available at:
http://www.interactive but the i-Docs symposia have expanded the definition to include any digital
documentary.net/ platform that allows interactivity (such as Web, DVD, mobiles, GPS devices
about/me/
and gallery installation). As such, interactivity is seen as a means through
which the viewer is positioned within the artefact itself, demanding him, or
her, to play an active role in the negotiation of the ‘reality’ being conveyed
through the i-doc. This view of interactivity requires a physical action to take
place between the user/participant and the digital artefact. It involves a human
computer interface, going beyond the act of interpretation to create feedback
loops with the digital system itself.
A brief historical overview of how the evolution of digital technology has
allowed the emergence of different types of i-docs demonstrates that a variety
of i-doc genres is already established, and that each of them uses technology to
create a different interactive bond between reality, the user and the artefact. As
yet, there is no formal consensus on how to classify i-docs – with Gifreu (2011)
and Galloway et al. (2007) having already proposed their own suggestions.
This article builds on the taxonomy proposed by Gaudenzi in Chapter 1 of her
Ph.D. (forthcoming).2 Her approach is to analyse i-docs through their interactive
logic, rather than through the digital platform that they use, their topic or their
message. She draws upon some key understandings of interactivity and argues,
similarly to Lister et al. in New Media: A Critical Introduction (2003), that different
understandings of interactivity have led to different types of digital artefacts.
By selecting four dominant understandings of interactivity – as a conversa-
tion with the computer (Lippman, in Brand 1988: 46), as linking within a text
(Aarseth 1994: 60), as interactive computation in physical space (Eberbach et al.
2004: 173) or as participation in an evolving database (Davenport and Murtaugh
1995: 6) – Gaudenzi proposes four interactive modes: the conversational, the
hypertext, the experiential and the participative. These modes were used as a
starting point from which to discuss our approach to the i-Docs symposia, out
of which further debates and ongoing discussions have emerged.

1. The conversational mode

The Aspen Movie Map (Lippman, 1978) is often referred to as the first attempt
to digitally document an experience. By using videodisc technology, and three
screens, the user was able to drive through a video reconstruction of the city
of Aspen. The use of digital technology to simulate a world where the user
has the illusion of navigating freely has also been used in video games, MUDs
and sandbox games, so it is with no surprise that journalists, and new media
artists, have been inspired to create ‘factual games’, or ‘docu-games’, such as
Gone Gitmo (Peña, 2007) or Americas Army (Wardynski, 2002). This type of
i-doc, which uses 3D worlds to create an apparently seamless interaction with
the user, lends itself to the Conversational mode because it positions the user
as if ‘in conversation’ with the computer.

126
 Interactive documentary

2. The Hypertext mode

One of the first digital artefacts to be officially called an interactive documentary
was  Moss Landing (Apple Multimedia Lab, 1989). During one day several
cameras recorded the life of the inhabitants of Moss Landing’s Harbour. Those
assets where then organized as a closed database of video clips that the user
could browse via a video hyperlink interface. This logic of hypertext documen-
tary has later been applied to CD-ROMs (such as Immemory by Marker, 1997)
and DVDs (such as Bleeding Through the Layers of Los Angeles by Klein, 2003).
Currently a multitude of projects that follow the same logic of ‘click here
and go there’ are being produced for the Web; those are often referred to
as web-docs. Inside The Haiti Earthquake (Gibson and McKenna,  2011), Out
My Window (Cizek, 2010), Journey to the End of Coal (Bollendorff, 2009) and
Forgotten Flags (Thalhofer, 2007) are just a few examples of this style of inter-
active documentary. This type of i-doc lends itself to the Hypertext mode
because it links assets within a closed video archive and gives the user an
exploratory role, normally enacted by clicking on pre-existing options.

3. The Participative mode

The advent of Web 2.0 has, however, allowed people to go further than
browsing through content: the affordances of the media have made possible
a two-way relationship between digital authors and their users. Although in
the late 1990s the MIT Interactive Cinema Group, led by Gloriana Davenport,
tried to develop ‘Evolving documentaries’ where ‘materials grow as the story
evolves’ (Davenport and Murtaugh, 1995: 6), it was only after 2005, when the
penetration of broadband in western countries reached a critical mass, that
interactive documentary producers started exploring ways to actively involve
their users within the production of their digital artefact. In what is often
referred to as collab-docs, or participatory-docs, the documentary producer ‘is
called upon to ‘stage a conversation’, with a user community, with research
subjects, with participants, co-producers and audiences’ (Dovey and Rose,
forthcoming 2013). In other words, in participative documentaries the user
can be involved during the production process – by for example editing online
(see RiP: a Remix Manifesto, Gaylor, 2004–2009) or shooting in the streets (see
18 Days in Egypt, Mehta and Elayat, 2011) – or during the launch and distri-
bution process (e.g. by answering questions online, like in 6 Billion Others
(Arthus-Bertrand, 2009), or by sending material and helping translating it as
in the Global Lives Project (Harris, 2010). This type of i-doc is described here
as being Participative, as it counts on the participation of the user to create an
open and evolving database.

4. The Experiential mode

Finally, mobile media and The Global Positioning System (GPS) have brought
digital content into physical space. 34 North 118 West (Hight, Knowlton and
Spellman, 2001), allowed people to walk in the streets of Los Angeles armed
with a Tablet PC, a GPS card and headphones. Depending on the position
of the participant, stories uncovering the early industrial era of Los Angeles
were whispered into the ears of the urban flâneur, accompanied by historic
illustrations on the computer screen. In 2007 Blast Theory created Rider Spoke
(Adams, 2007), a bicycle ride where people could record very personal answers
via the use of a mobile device (Nokia N800) mounted on the handlebar of their

127
Judith Aston | Sandra Gaudenzi

3. Aston began her career bicycle. Those testimonies were then made accessible to any other participant
working with the BBC
Interactive Television
passing in the area where the message was first recorded. This type of locative
unit in the mid-1980s documentary invites the participant to experience a ‘hybrid space’ (De Souza
and then went on to e Silva 2006: 262) where the distinction between the virtual and the physical
study for a Ph.D. in
interaction design becomes blurred. I-docs of this nature tend to play on our enacted perception
and cross-cultural while moving in space. As the participant moves through an interface that is
communication at physical (although enhanced by the digital device) embodiment and situated
the Royal College of
Art (2003). Gaudenzi knowledge are constantly elaborating new situated meanings. This category is
worked for ten years in named as being Experiential because it brings users into physical space, and
television production
before doing an M.A.
creates an experience that challenges their senses and their enacted percep-
in interactive media tion of the world.
at the London College
of Communication,
which lead her to Why are such modes important?
teach there. She then
started a Ph.D. on the Since each interactive mode creates a different dynamic with the user, the
topic of interactive author, the artefact and its context, the argument presented here is that each
documentaries at
Goldsmiths that is, at
one can be seen as affording a different construction of ‘reality’. While experi-
the time of writing, in ential i-docs can add layers to the felt perception of reality, to create an embod-
its completion stages. ied experience for the participants, conversational i-docs can use 3D worlds to
recreate scenarios, therefore playing with options of reality. Participative i-docs
allow people to have a voice and to participate in the construction of reality,
while hypertext i-docs can construct multiple pathways through a set ‘reality’
to provide a range of perspectives on a common set of themes or issues. In this
sense, each form of i-doc seems to negotiate reality far beyond Stella Bruzzi’s
vision of documentaries as ‘performative acts whose truth comes into being
only at the moment of filming’ (2000:7) because the ‘moment of truth’ is now
also placed into the actions and decisions of the user/participant. We see this
way of thinking about i-docs as offering a tool as much for the co-creation of
reality as for its representation. This is a position that has led us into placing
debates around the relationship between authorship and agency within i-docs
at the centre of our discussions.

The first i-Docs symposium and its timeliness

First meeting in London at the Documentary Now! conference in January
2009, we found common ground in having worked within the field of inter-
active documentaries for a number of years, both in the emergent industry
and through Ph.D. study.3� We noted that over the previous two years there
had been a real explosion of productions in the field. Big productions such as
Highrise (Cizek, 2009–ongoing) from the NFB, had been launched, and the
television company Arte had created a portal at http://webdocs.arte.tv/ which
hosted a variety of projects, from the recent New York Minute (Rochet and
Venancio, 2010) and Prison Valley (Dufresne and Brault, 2010) to a whole series
of twelve web-documentaries dedicated to the 50 years of independence of
Africa. French television France 5 had also produced 24 web-documentaries,
part of a series called Portraits d’un Nouveau Monde/Portraits of a New World
(Hamelin, 2010).
These were big projects produced for mainstream audiences leading to
our conclusion that i-docs were no longer a niche form. Whilst the National
Film Board of Canada had also invested in an impressive portal of interac-
tive documentaries  – of which Highrise and Out My Window, from Kat Cizek,
are probably the most well known – but there were also others such as Welcome
to Pine Point (Simons and Shoebridge, 2011), GDP (Choquette, 2009-10), Waterlife

128
 Interactive documentary

(Mcmahon, 2009) and Mapping Main Street (Oehler, Heppermann, Shapins 4. Where Aston has
been developing
and Burns, 2009–ongoing). Finally, a range of independent productions were teaching and
emerging: projects such as the French Brève de Trottoirs (Lambert and Salva, research programmes
2010), pervasive games such as Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke (Adams, 2007), and in interactive
documentary since the
university research projects such as Gone Gitmo (Peña, 2007). mid-1990s.
Given this observation, it seemed a logical next step to create a commu-
nity of like-minded people by organizing a conference on the subject. Whilst
there were new media awards attached to larger documentary festivals, there
were no events dedicated to interactive documentary. The focus of the i-Docs
symposia was not to be about debating the merits of linear versus interac-
tive formats, but more about understanding the new opportunities that were
being opened up by the development of interactive technologies within
a twenty-first century context. At the heart of our combined interest in the
field was a fundamental belief in the human need to try to make sense of
the world around us, using whatever tools are to hand, and in the role of
narrative and storytelling in that process. In accepting the idea that, in our
contemporary times, digital media plays an important part in shaping culture,
and in influencing the ways in which we relate to the world, our aim was to
explore how interactive technologies might offer new ways to help us both to
understand the world and to shape it. The Digital Cultures Research Centre
at the University of the West of England4� agreed to host the conference and
fifteen months later in March 2011 the world’s first symposium dedicated to
the interactive documentary genre was held.

Conceptual framework for the panels and

keynote speakers
Our Call for Papers for i-Docs 2011 was deliberately broad, to accommo-
date a range of approaches to i-docs and stimulate debate around the full
range of possibilities. Given her background in anthropology and inter-
cultural communication, Aston in particular wanted to make sure that there
was space to push at the edges of taxonomies, and that consideration of
authorship, intent and purpose remained central to the discussions. This was
based on her belief that the most interesting work in i-docs often arises when
genre is transcended and boundaries are blurred. Our two different starting
points in relation to the analysis of i-docs created a strong dynamic for discus-
sion, through which we created our structure for the first two symposia. The
common ground that we kept returning to was our belief that the analysis of
i-docs should be seen as an open and interdisciplinary process within a field
of endeavour that is necessarily fluid, dynamic and in constant flux.
Based on our discussions around modes of interaction, authorship and
agency within i-docs, we decided that the panels and keynote speakers would
be organized around four main themes. These were: participation and co-
collaboration; cross-platform and transmedia production; locative, perva-
sive and game logics; non-linear strategies and database-driven documen-
taries. In addition to this, we convened two additional sub-panels around
conceptual  approaches to i-docs and the relationship between archives and
memory in the creation of i-docs. In terms of establishing the field and rais-
ing awareness of the current state of play with i-docs, we felt that this was
a good reflection of the state of play and that it would stimulate discussion
around a wide range of work and issues. Discussion around taxonomies was
included in the Call for Papers with the deliberate intention to test Gaudenzi’s

129
Judith Aston | Sandra Gaudenzi

5. www.watershed.co.uk/ proposed modes. In an emergent field such as that of interactive documen-

6. www.pmstudio.co.uk tary it seemed appropriate to involve the early adopters of the genre (both
practitioners and academics) in mapping the field. In the same way that user-
7. http://www.dcrc.org.
uk/projects/fluid- testing is needed in interactive design, it was felt that peer approval was
interfaces-narrative- essential to accurately map such a participatory field.
exploration#
From the range of proposals that were submitted, it soon became clear
that the themes that we had set for the symposium did indeed reflect a shared
understanding of emergent genres and debates. Given that the first of these
themes related to documentary intent, whereas the other themes were more
focused on structural approaches to i-docs, we began the day with the partici-
pation and co-collaboration panel. The symposium was a one-day event, held
at the Watershed Media Centre5� in central Bristol, with a follow-up discussion
in the Pervasive Media Studio6� on the next day, around where to take it next.
The event was very well attended and had a strong international flavour, with
many of the delegates commenting on how it had offered a condensed and
clearly defined snapshot of an exciting new field of practice and study.

Key issues and debates raised by the symposium

What follows is our interpretation of the key themes that emerged from that
first symposium, followed by a discussion of how these themes led into the
planning for the second symposium. The key themes that are discussed relate
to the ethics and nature of participation, whether encouraging participation
was an innately good thing, discussion around transmedia storytelling and
multiplatform production, questions around the imperative to categorize a
fluid field of study, and discussion on the place for authorial communication
in i-docs where the inter-actant becomes an active agent in the construction
of the documentary ‘reality’. These themes are discussed below with particu-
lar reference to our own views on i-docs and to the issues raised by the four
keynote speakers, whom we selected to reflect the range of debates that we
wanted to stimulate.
As CEO and Interactive Producer for Upian, Alexandre’s Brachet’s pres-
entation focused on two of his company’s seminal web-based projects – Gaza
Sderot (2008) and Prison Valley (2010). Both of these projects combine authored
narrative with a fluid and intuitive interface to create a meaningful and engag-
ing experience for the user. This represents a real step on from many of the
problems around the stop start nature of the point and click style interfaces of
earlier hypertext-based works. As part of his presentation, Brachet was keen
to point out that good interaction design is integral to the successful delivery
of content and to the creation of meaning. In this sense, finding a common
language to connect computer programmers with designers and producers
remains one of the key challenges for i-docs production. If design is part of
the content, then the authorship of an i-doc does need to include the design-
ers as part of the editorial process.
Gaza Sderot was of particular interest to Aston, given her work around the
development of fluid interfaces for narrative exploration7, developed through
her ongoing collaboration with the Oxford anthropologist, Wendy James
(Aston 2010). What makes Gaza Sderot so successful for her is that it negotiates
a happy medium between temporal narrative and spatial juxtaposition, with
the fluid interface playing an important role in conveying meaning through
its ordering and presentation of video segments. This is achieved by using a
split screen technique, by which the user can compare and contrast a series of

130
 Interactive documentary

film clips from across the Israeli/Palestinian divide recorded over a set period
of time. The viewer is offered various ways to engage with these recordings,
through a timeline, through a map or through a thematic approach. This
represents a significant development on from Manovich’s work on spatial
montage (2001), in that it moves beyond his interest in random juxtaposition
to create a more authored and cohesive approach, out of which documentary
meaning can be generated.
In addition to this, both projects offer a limited degree of user participation,
with Gaza Sderot encouraging discussion of issues raised through an integrated
forum and Prison Valley going a step further by inviting users to send messages
to the subjects of the film, thus breaking the conventional border between film-
makers (observers) and subjects (observed). Given that Prison Valley is a more
recent production than Gaza Sderot, Brachet was asked if his work is gradu-
ally moving towards facilitating a greater degree of participation in i-docs. His
response was that each of his i-docs projects has its own integrity and that
participation around an i-doc can be just as valid as participation within an
i-doc. This became an important theme, which re-surfaced on several occa-
sions over the course of the day and is one which is central to our own ongo-
ing discussions around different modes of interactivity within i-docs.
As Multiplatform Commissioner for the BBC, Nick Cohen focused on
his insights into transmedia storytelling gained from his work at the BBC
as multiplatform commissioner for factual and art programmes. Working
his way through a number of recent projects, he described his intentions to
move audiences away from observing the world through the knowing eyes
of the  programme-maker towards a logic of gaining understanding through
more active forms of involvement and participation. For him, a strong trans-
media concept needed to be platform neutral, with such projects benefiting
greatly from a single creative lead across the different platforms. Encouraging
people to participate was still a major challenge for institutions such as the
BBC who need to create strong motivational drivers, such as tapping into
peoples’ emotions, offering them some form of personal gain, the oppor-
tunity for self-expression and recognition or appealing to the greater good.
He referred to the 90-9-1 principle, as cited by Jacob Nielson (2006), which
suggests that there is a participation inequality on the Internet with only 1%
of people creating content, 9% editing or modifying that content, and 90%
viewing content without actively contributing.
Cohen’s intervention was important in showing how much broadcasters
are very much aware of changes in consumption patterns of their younger
audiences. It is not true that the born digital watch less television than their
older generation, it is just that they watch their favourite programmes on
demand and on their computer rather than on a television set. In order to keep
their audience tuned in, broadcasters are increasingly commissioning multi-
platform projects, in which a television programme has an interactive coun-
terpart. This is making broadcasters one of the major transmedia producers
of the market. This view of transmedia production contrasted with an earlier
comment made by Brachet, who stated that his projects were created first and
foremost for the web. Whilst many of them existed across a range of differ-
ent platforms, for Brachet a good web-doc would always be conceived first
and foremost for that medium. This raised an important point about transme-
dia production, as to whether one platform would always drive the others or
whether a genuinely equal relationship could be established in terms of the
content being conveyed across the different platforms.

131
Judith Aston | Sandra Gaudenzi

Transmedia storytelling and changing habits of audience engagement

is linked to the wider issue of convergence and changing media literacies.
As digital technologies are evolving, we are witnessing the development
of a widespread assumption that consumers of media content are gradu-
ally becoming more active participants in the creation and interpretation of
content. However, it is our view that this assumption is not a foregone conclu-
sion and that, authorial communication is not necessarily being replaced by a
logic of shared participation. We believe that it is more fruitful to envisage a
creative tension between these two imperatives, with each i-doc taking an
approach to authorship and participation which is appropriate to its aims and
intentions. In addition to this, authorship should be seen as something that
can exist on several levels, from the more traditional approach of the author
as subject expert, through the author taking on a more curatorial approach, to
the authorship being genuinely distributed through a user generated process.
As co-founder of Blast Theory, Matt Adam’s deliberately positioned Blast
Theory as ‘just a bunch of artists’. This was in keeping with our observation
that many of the works that could put into the i-docs basket are not called as
such by their creators. This may be partly because the term is not well estab-
lished enough, but it is also linked to the fact that the creators often come
from other worlds than the documentary one (as artists, game designers, new
media producers and so forth). For such new media authors the use of video,
and of a traditional narrative structure, might not be essential at all to medi-
ate reality. If what is asked of documentary is to present an authorial point of
view, then the link with a longer tradition of documentary making is clear.
However, digital and participatory media are also affording new goals, one
of which is to position the audience ‘in the place of’ a character – and there-
fore finding meaning in a ‘what would I do if’ logic – rather than ‘this is what
has happened’. In this new logic, a pervasive game experience (such as Rider
Spoke), or a locative art project (such as Ulrike and Eamon Compliant) is not
even aiming to represent reality because it is creating real-time lived experi-
ences that bring the participant in a position of spatial and personal discovery.
This links back to a core theme within this article that i-docs offer new ways
not only to represent reality but also to construct it.
In a world where it is understood that reality and perception are subjective
terms, a valid approach to i-docs is to focus more on our ethical choices than on
illusory objective facts. As Adams explained, Blast Theory’s work plays with the
blurred distinction between the real, the fictional and the imaginary. His claim
is that, since universal ‘truth’ does not exist, it is our position in relation to the
truth that matters. Blast Theory’s work elegantly leads users/participants to those
moments of choice – that will effectively say more about themselves than about
the world around us. As such, the role of immersion and play as effective tools for
creating dialogue around ethical questions is a key area for further development.
Blast Theory’s work illustrates how participants can engage in an active
experience, which is embodied and which evolves through a dynamic interac-
tive process. The idea that enacted perception – as opposed to an interpretation
of a pre-authored version of reality – can be at the centre of the documentary
experience is one of the aspects which is new and exciting about i-docs and
which is elucidated upon in Gaudenzi’s writing around the relational object
that adapts to its environment and transforms itself while changing its envi-
ronment too (Gaudenzi 2011). In this sense, pervasive and immersive games
should not be seen as being superficial forms of entertainment, but rather as
offering new ways to position ourselves within nonfiction stories.

132
 Interactive documentary

Florian Thalhofer’s description of his difficult experience in editing his first

linear film Planet Galata (2011) for Arte television, raised issues relating to
the affordances of both the linear and non-linear form. As the inventor of
Korsakow (an authoring tool for interactive video), he claimed that ‘the film’
(the linear Planet Galata) made him lie. He used humour and provocation to
explain how the Artistotelian narrative form – with its need of a beginning, a
complication, a middle and a resolution at the end – ‘forced’ him to construct
a story that was not fitting with his real life experience. Contrary to the argu-
ment that most documentary makers have about the use of interactivity in
documentaries – that the lack of authorial voice ultimately leads to a multi-
tude of meaningless stories – Thalhofer argued that interactivity can set up
scenarios whilst at the same time freeing the author from forcing a point of
view onto his audience.
I-docs certainly do afford new ways to present multiple points of view –
whether from the perspective of a single authorial voice or from the perspec-
tive of a community of authors working collaboratively around a common
theme – and they can be used to present contested points of view, allow-
ing users to come to their own conclusions. Aston takes the position in her
own work that, whilst this is still achievable within documentary films, i-docs
can offer more scope for in-depth engagement with a set of complex ideas
through the presentation of multiple entry points and simultaneous storylines.
This is an area that she has been concerned with for a number of years, given
her ongoing engagement with ethnographic archives and multilayered narra-
tive (Aston 2008). For her, authorial intent remains central to these debates,
with some i-docs adopting a linear and didactic approach to their storytelling,
and some documentary films doing everything they can to create more open-
ended and non-linear forms of storytelling.
Aside from the issues raised by the four keynote presentations, a series
of other important contributions were made by the panel presenters of the
day. Although it would be impossible to give justice to the richness of the
debate, here are a few points and contributions that are relevant to the ongo-
ing debates among the i-docs community that were established through the
2011 symposium:

• A taxonomy of i-docs is very much needed, as it is the only way to avoid

confusion when speaking of emergent genres within the i-docs family.
Peter Dukes (Westminster University), Sandra Gaudenzi (Goldsmiths)
and Arnau Gifreu (Universitat de Vic) have different propositions and are
continuing the academic debate on this subject.
• The array of participatory projects presented at i-Docs reinforced the feel-
ing that both transmedia and collaborative documentary are very current
themes. Siobhan O’Flynn (Toronto) gave a concise overview of the key
issues within her presentation and Kerric Harvey (Washington) raised
important questions about the ethical consequences of user collabora-
tion in documentaries. The point was made that it is necessary to consider
both who is held responsible for the content of a collaborative i-doc and to
also clarify what participation really means and what are its limits in terms
of the documentary genre.
• In opposition to this current trend, the question was asked by Rod Coover
(Pennysylvania) as to whether there is a place for long-form scholarly texts
in i-docs, in which users are invited to enter into a pre-authored world,
which combines spatial exploration with narrative organisation to deliver

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Judith Aston | Sandra Gaudenzi

a sustained argument through non-linear means? If so, is it legitimate for

these texts to have a single authorial voice or should they always present
their ideas through a multitude of voices?
• Given that i-docs need to create meaning, questions were asked around
the role of user testing in the design and development of i-docs, and at
what stage in the development process is user testing most appropriate. Is
user testing more appropriate to some types of i-doc than others and how
important is it to create pleasurable and engaging interfaces? These ques-
tions led to a somewhat heated debate around the purpose of an i-doc
and whether or not artistic expression is a valid form of enquiry within
the genre. Rod Coover (Pennysylvania) presented the view of the indi-
vidual artist, whereas Matt Adams saw his role as an artist as being very
much part of a collaborative and iterative process involving feedback from
participants.
• User generated content has emerged as particularly powerful when paired
with social and activist causes. By transforming watchers into users, and
then users into doers, the combination of a shared cause and social media
is very effective. Could this mean that i-docs might become a new form of
activism, where information and action can finally meet? Sharon Daniel
(Santa Cruz) provided a moving example of this, describing herself as a
context provider who works with communities, collecting their stories,
soliciting their opinions, and building online archives to make this data
available across social, cultural and economic boundaries.

Conceptual approach to the second i-Docs symposium

The interest generated by the first symposium, and the discussion that ensued
from it, suggested that i-docs are flourishing and here to stay – even if they
might be given other names such as web-docs, collab-docs, trans-media docs,
cross-media docs, database docs and hypertext docs. As the convenors of the
i-Docs symposia, it was no longer necessary for us to proclaim that interactive
documentary exists as a genre, since this is now a given. Instead, the ongoing
aim became to provide a space where new trends can be explored, concerns
can be debated and critical questions can be shared. It was with this view in
mind that four main questions were established as starting points for debate
at i-Docs 2012. These were questions that came directly from the issues that
emerged at i-Docs 2011 and from our own knowledge of the sector. We were
also keen to make sure that the multitude of authoring and content manage-
ment tools have emerged in the last two years (Klynt, Popcorn, W3Doc, Zeega
to state a few), were represented at i-Docs 2012. Our aim was to establish a
set of ongoing conversations between the authors of these tools and with the
practitioners that are using the various tools to make i-docs.
The four central questions for i-Docs 2012 were:

1. User participation in i-docs: how can the act of participating change the
meaning of an i-doc and what is the role of authorship in this process?
2. Layered experience, augmented reality games and pervasive media: are
locative i-docs changing our notion of physical experience and space?
3. Activism and ethics: how can i-docs be used to develop new strategies for
activism?
4. Open source and the semantic web: how are tagging video, HTML5 and
the semantic web opening up new routes for i-docs?

134
 Interactive documentary

The second symposium, held in March 2012, adopted a fluid form to respond 8. The programme and
to these questions, with a mixture of panels, workshops, labs and feed-back speaker details for both
i-Docs 2011 and i-Docs
sessions providing the right setting to generate in depth and critical debate. 2012 can be found on
To facilitate these debates, the symposium was set up both to look forwards the i-docs web-hub,
along with an evolving
at emerging possibilities and to look backwards at ongoing concerns within series of blog posts in
the wider field of documentary endeavour. Central to this approach was our relation to the ongoing
belief in the value of establishing an arena for constructive debate based on development of the
genre: http://i-docs.org/
the principle of grounded research. This research is practice-led and predi-
cated on the establishment of a community, through which core theoretical
concerns and their connection to a longer history of documentary making can
begin to be identified within an interdisciplinary context. Whilst it is beyond
the scope of this article to discuss the outcomes of this second symposium,
space was specifically provided for reflection on the place of i-docs within a
wider continuum of documentary making.�8

Conclusion
It is important to us that the community that has sprung up around the
i-Docs symposia remains open to new technologies and ideas, whilst at
the same time recognizing strong areas of continuity with the wider tradi-
tion of documentary making. Our view is that interactive media creates a
dynamic relationship between authors, users, technology and environment
that allows for fluidity, emergence and co-emergence of reality. One of the
things that we find to be new and exciting new about i-docs is the relations
of interdependence that they create between the user and the reality that
they portray. Feed-back loops that are not possible in linear narrative
can give the opportunity both to participants and to the artefact to re-
define themselves and to change. Where this is the case, it is through
enacted engagement with the artefact that the reality being portrayed
comes into being. At the same time, it is also important to consider where
the authorship lies in an i-doc and to recognize the fact that some i-docs are
developed through a more collaborative process than others. Whilst contem-
porary debate around i-docs does seem to be focused on user generated
content and participatory processes, we want to position these approaches
alongside equivalent discussion of the role of expert knowledge and more
artistic forms of expression within i-docs.
I-docs that follow a hypertext, a participative, an experiential or a conver-
sational logic will vary in terms of their look and feel, but also in terms of
their political impact. Whereas hypertext i-docs offer new ways to access and
engage with a pre-authored set of ideas and arguments, collaborative i-docs
can fundamentally question the role we want to have in society to give us active
choices that can re-define who we want to be. Locative i-docs, on the other
hand, can add layers to the felt perception of reality by transforming the user
into an embodied enactor, while conversational i-docs can be good at placing
the participant in front of hypothetical ethical choices. These are just some
of the distinctions that we can already see in the burgeoning family of i-docs
and that the i-Docs symposia have been able to highlight. No doubt, many
more forms will emerge in the coming years to challenge our views of partic-
ipation by creating new opportunities to negotiate and co-create reality. In
these times of constant flux, it is hoped that i-Docs will remain the place to
debate, ponder and anticipate where the tides are bringing us and how to
navigate the waves.

135
Judith Aston | Sandra Gaudenzi

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Suggested citation
Aston, J. and Gaudenzi, S. (2012), ‘Interactive documentary: setting the field’,
Studies in Documentary Film, 6: 2, pp. 125–139, doi: 10.1386/sdf.6.2.125_1.

Contributor details
Judith Aston is a senior lecturer at the University of the West of England,
specializing in multiplatform documentary and digitally expanded film-
making. She has a background in Visual Anthropology and Computer-related
Design, holding an M.A from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. from
the Royal College of Art in London. She was a pioneer in the emergent inter-
active media industry of the mid-1980s, working on a range of early projects
with the likes of Apple Computing, the BBC Interactive Television Unit and
Virgin Publishing. In her capacity as co-convenor of the i-Docs symposia, she
is particularly interested in placing debates around authorship, agency and
new approaches to storytelling at the centre of the ongoing discussions.
Contact: University of the West of England, Bower Ashton Campus, Clanage
Road, Bristol, BS3 4QP.
E-mail: judith.aston@uwe.ac.uk

Sandra Gaudenzi started her career as a television producer and has been
teaching interactive media theory at the London College of Communication
(University of the Arts London) since 1999. Her research interests include
interactive documentary, interactive narrative, mobile video, locative media
and augmented reality. Sandra is also co-convener of i-Docs: a conference

138
 Interactive documentary

totally dedicated to interactive documentaries, held in Bristol in 2011 and

2012. She is currently finishing her Ph.D. – ‘The living documentary: from
representing reality to co-creating reality in digital interactive documentary’ –
at Goldsmiths (University of London).
Contact: 1 Banister Mews, London NW6 3RQ, UK.
E-mail: sgaudenzi@yahoo.com

Judith Aston and Sandra Gaudenzi have asserted his right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work in
the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

139
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